From the Farms of Indonesia
We offer fair trade vanilla bean products from the farms of Indonesia. Your purchase directly supports the non-profit, Jochedbed's Hope, and Indonesian farmers and communities.
How It All Began
Our journey began in the summer of 2023 when a man named Yoeli, a local church leader, approached us about the possibility of taking the vanilla bean grown in his small mountain village and finding a market for it in the United States. It didn’t sell for enough on the island. In the past, he had shipped it to other, more industrialized islands within Indonesia and nearby countries like Thailand, but the Covid-19 pandemic had disrupted those connections. He offered us a one-kilo sample in hope, later to be supplemented if things went well; we asked for fifteen. Getting over thirty pounds of vanilla to the other side of the world proved to be more of an ordeal than we had hoped.
Nonetheless, after many long phone calls with US customs agents, Singaporean airport employees, and various airline representatives, two suitcases arrived in Fremont, Nebraska just three weeks after they had begun their trip. Then the next step began; every bean had to be checked and sorted to be packaged whole, ground into powder, or aged for extract. It’s still early in the process. Our prayer is that this initial experiment can grow, supplying a high quality product while providing life-giving job opportunities to individuals in a place where such chances are often scarce. Your purchases directly benefit those individuals and your committed support allows us to further develop our network and processes as we strive to maximize our impact.
